Living to be 100 requires mostly that you be a she

Updated 7:25 am, Tuesday, December 11, 2012

When it comes to doing things that aren't good for you, men are more likely to ignore common sense than women.

They smoke more, drink more, eat too much, play violent sports, drive fast, get in fights, climb dangerous mountains more often, have a tendency to wander into the woods with buddies toting hunting rifles and whiskey, and in general do an incredible number of things that defy explanation. How many women do you see car surfing?

Perhaps, then, it should come as no surprise then that more women live to a ripe old age than men. And when it comes to fully ripe - the magic century mark - it's not even close. Of those who manage to live to see 100, about 80 percent are female.

Don't fret guys: Truth be told, the likelihood of living to 100 is still pretty remote. A report on so-called centenarians released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that they represent only two of every 10,000 people. The total is growing, granted, with the 2010 number of 53,364 up by more than 40 percent over the number from a generation earlier. But it won't be for a half-century or so before we'll see the true effects of recent medical advances and those sure to come. By that time the number could be 10 times the current one.

The United States has more centenarians than any other nation, the Census Bureau reported. For what it's worth, more of them live in the South than anywhere else, followed by the Midwest. (There are 2,917 in Texas). They also were disproportionately white (more than 80 percent) and lived mostly in urban areas (85 percent). Female centenarians were more likely to live in a nursing home or supervised setting than men, 43 percent of whom lived with family members.

So what causes people to live so long? The widely cited and ongoing New England Centenarian Study of the Boston University School of Medicine says there is no simple explanation. Ultralong life is mostly the result of luck, good behavioral decisions and some good genes.

And of the population of centenarians, there is no standard profile.

"They vary widely in years of education (no education to postgraduate degrees), socioeconomic status (very poor to very rich), religion, ethnicity and patterns of diet (strictly vegetarian to extremely rich in saturated fats)," the study overview states. "However, the centenarians we have studied do have a number of characteristics in common."

The leading characteristics were predictable: Few centenarians are obese, and in the case of men, they are nearly always lean; there is little in the way of smoking history; they seem to be able to handle stress better than a majority of people.